Texas Tech basketball: What we learned in win over Tennessee State
Thursday night, the Texas Tech basketball team beat Tennessee State 72-57 in Lubbock in a game that was the most interesting of the year to this point.
The fact that the Texas Tech basketball team moved to 4-0 on Thursday by taking down Tennessee State is no surprise. But many were not expecting the visiting Tigers to make the contest as close as they did through the middle of the second half.
A smaller but rather quick team, Tennessee State was able to keep the Red Raiders’ stable of slashing guards from driving to the rim at will. Additionally, TSU played off the Red Raiders and gambled on the fact that Tech’s early-season hot shooting from deep would prove to be a mirage.
That strategy paid off as Tech missed 11 of the 13 shots from deep in the first half. In fact, the only two Red Raiders that hit a long-range shot were Davide Moretti (4-6, which was no surprise) and Terrence Shannon Jr. (2-4, which was a rather significant surprise).
Of course, the team’s 7-day layoff since it’s previous game had to play some of a role in its offensive struggles. But according to Chris Beard, the problem was about effort more than anything else.
"“Tonight, I thought that a couple of time that Tennessee State played harder than us,” he said. “We had a nice conversation about that at halftime, and our second half intensity was better. I thought both teams played really hard tonight. You have to give credit to the defenses for the bad shooting night.”"
As a team, Tech shot just 34% but it’s work at the free-throw line helped make up for its struggles from the field. The Red Raiders were an incredible 32-38 (84.2%) where they held a 19-point advantage over TSU.
"“We won the game tonight on the free-throw line,” Beard said. “You got to give our gives some credit, step up there and hitting a good percentage, over 80% we showed some poise and composure when things got a little crazy out there stayed away from the temptation to get involved in anything that could lead to a technical. I thought our free-throw shooting won the game for us tonight, on a night when a lot of other things just weren’t good enough.”"
It was nice to see Tech have to overcome some challenges for the first time this year. In the first three games of the year, Beard’s team was never pushed in a meaningful way as everything came easy for the Red Raiders.
Of course, Tennessee State is not the type of team that has the talent to make the No. 12 Red Raiders pay for an off night. But they did cut the lead to 35-32 in the middle of the second half forcing many people in the crowd of over 12,000 to grow a bit more antsy than they expected to be in this early-season game.
"“I said all week long as we prepared for this game and talking to you guys, this is a big 12 team in terms of their two guards, 0 and 1 are very quick,” Beard said. “This is Big 12 speed and they have their length and athleticism on the perimeter, so I thought by far this is the most athletic team we have played, took a little while to adjust to that. “I just didn’t think we ever got into a flow offensively. We would have a couple good possessions and then kick ourselves in the foot, we would have a couple good possessions and then they would make a good play, you have to give them credit because we just never got into a flow where we had any kind of consistency with our offense.”"
While Beard was somewhat hyperbolic in deeming TSU a Big 12-caliber team, the Tigers were a team that did expose Tech is some areas. So let’s take a look at what we learned from the Red Raiders’ fourth game of the young season.